Booth to keep a sharp eye out for Forrest
and his men, who were reportedly already
moving into the area. Booth was either
extremely confident or extremely careless.
Things were quiet for 30 or 40 miles
around Fort Pillow, he assured Hurlbut. “I
think it is perfectly safe. I can hold the post
against any force for forty-eight hours.”
Events would soon prove him tragically
wrong on both counts.
Forrest rendezvoused with Chalmers at
Brownsville, 38 miles east of Fort Pillow,
on the afternoon of April 11. He directed
Chalmers to head for Fort Pillow as early
as possible the next morning. Chalmers,
well schooled in Forrest’s maxims of
speed, obedience, and decisiveness,
headed out the next day at 6 AM. Colonels
Robert McCulloch and Tyree Bell, com-
manding Chalmers’ two brigades, soon
made contact with Federal pickets outside
the fort. Captain Frank J. Smith of the 2nd
Missouri, leading the Confederate
advance, sent his men creeping around
behind the pickets to pick them off. Only
a handful of pickets managed to make
it back to the fort with the unwelcome
news that Forrest’s Rebels had suddenlyappeared as if out of thin air.
Forrest’s veteran fighters quickly con-
solidated their position. The Federal
defenders, with characteristic laxity, had
failed to man the outer works, allowing
the Southern troopers to concentrate their
fire on the inner line of works. Sharp-
shooters quickly moved into place behind
fallen logs, tree stumps and thick under-
brush, and atop high knolls overlooking
the fort. They began pouring devastating
volleys into the surprised Union ranks,
concentrating on the officers. “We suffered
pretty severely in the loss of commissioned
officers by the unerring aim of the rebel
sharpshooters,” Lieutenant Mack J. Leam-
ing of the 13th Tennessee reported later.
Among the first to fall was Major Booth,
who had been strolling incautiously
between the fort’s two battery ports when
he was fatally struck by a rifle bullet to the
chest. His death, reported at 9 AM,
abruptly left the fort under the command
of the comparatively inexperienced Brad-
ford, who now had the position
he had wanted from the first.
Doubtless, he would have wished
for better timing.
Forrest arrived on the field an
hour later and, as was his wont,
immediately undertook a
personal reconnaissance
of the scene. By this time
Chalmers’ men had cap-
tured the second line of
works and invested the
fort itself. Fire from
inside the battlements
killed two of Forrest’s
horses, the second rear-
ing up abruptly and
falling backward onto
the furious general,
badly bruising his leg
and doing little to
improve his disposition.
Forrest’s adjutant, Cap-
tain Charles W. Anderson,
suggested mildly that the gen-
eral complete his reconnaissance
on foot, but Forrest told him in
no uncertain terms that he was“just as apt to be hit one way as another,
and that he could see better where he was.”
Forrest skulked from no man.
With his experienced eye, it did not take
Forrest long to pinpoint Fort Pillow’s fatal
flaws. Not only did the numerous ravines
provide perfect cover for his men, allowing
them to approach as near as 25 yards with-
out detection, but the Union artillery pieces
could not be depressed sharply enough to
fire at the enemy with any success. Ander-
son summed up the morning’s findings:
“The width or thickness of the works
across the top prevented the garrison from
firing down on us, as it could only be done
by mounting and exposing themselves to
the unerring aim of our sharpshooters,
posted behind stumps and logs and all the
neighboring hills. They were also unable
to depress their artillery so as to rake these
slopes with grape and canister, and so far
as safety was concerned, we were as well
fortified as they were; the only difference
was that they were on one side and we on
the other of the same fortification. They
had no sharpshooters with which to annoy
our main force, while ours sent a score of
bullets at every head that appeared above
the walls. It was perfectly apparent to any
man endowed with the smallest amount of
common sense that to all intents and pur-
poses the fort was ours.” Unfortunately for
the defenders, common sense was in short
supply that day.
Bradford, the new commander, appar-
ently believed that he could either hold out
until reinforcements arrived in the form of
two troop ships steaming up from Mem-
phis, or he could somehow bluff Nathan
Bedford Forrest into withdrawing. Brad-
ford had read the misleading newspaper
accounts of the Paducah incident; Forrest
didn’t read newspapers.
From their concealed vantage points, the
Confederates continued to blaze away at
the Federals huddling ineffectually behind
their breastworks. Meanwhile, McCul-
loch’s men moved into position among the
barracks huts southwest of the fort that
the hastily retreating soldiers had failed to
set afire. At the northern end of the fort,
Colonel Clark R. Barteau’s 2nd TennesseeA well-turned-out artilleryman in the
United States Colored Troops (USCT).
Two African American units, the 6th U.S.
Heavy Artillery and the 2nd U.S. Light
Artillery, were stationed at Fort Pillow.“It was asked whether it
was intended to include
the Negro soldiers as
well as the white, to
which both General
Forrest and General
Chalmers replied that
it was so intended
and that if the fort
surrendered the
whole garrison, white and
black, should be treated
as prisoners of war.”Q-Spr16 Fort Pillow *SILO_Layout 1 1/14/16 3:04 PM Page 72